Episode 10 | August 18
Laiwan on Jin-me Yoon

Jin-me Yoon, Souvenirs of the Self (Postcard Series), 1991, postcards. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2015. Photo: Lief Hall.

“We each in turn return to 2021 from 1991
listening to these mountains
listening to this lake…”

Jin-me Yoon has been a critical voice in the development of discussions around identity within visual art for three decades, and has taught as faculty in SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts since 1992. Following Yoon's own description of her artistic strategy as "semiotic collisions” — a means of extracting something from one context and placing it in another to ignite a proliferation of meanings — Laiwan composes their own "semiotic collision" in the form of a three-part score, meditating on Yoon's Souvenirs of the Self (Postcard Series) (1991). Laiwan works to leave the space of representation open, citing American Vietnamese philosopher and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, as a commitment to not speaking on their subject's behalf or in their place.

Laiwan is a cultural activist, interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator with a wide-ranging practice based in poetics and philosophy. In 1983, she graduated from Emily Carr College of Art + Design and founded the Or Gallery. She received an MFA from Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts in 1999. Based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaɬ First Nations, she teaches in the MFA Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College, USA.

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Transcript
 

[Image Description: A postcard image shows the artist Jin-me Yoon standing before the frozen waters of Lake Louise and snow-covered mountains. She is wearing a dark patterned cardigan sweater, light blue jeans, and brown leather loafers. She stands erect on top of a stone, gazing directly at the camera with her hands forming loose fists by her side.]